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Bretton Woods, Sunday 10 January 2010

billski

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Caveat: If you think I'm taking my hands out of my gloves at minus eight degrees to take photos, you are nuts!

"Groomed to perfection" We heard the term again and again all day. Bump-less groomers abounded today. Then again, I was looking for the "best snow" and least crowds within a reasonable commute. I probably would have gone as far as Burke, but another agenda prevailed.

Grooming was quite smooth and level. A great place to practice your form. Bump skiers need not apply.

I've lost count of the number of times I've skied here.

We had a great day. The snow was hardpacked, lightly skied and fast. It had zero (nada count) scrapers on the trails. We worked at making the best of an intermediate and underconfident beginner's area. We succeeded immensely. No lines all day, guess a lot of wimps have a problem with sub-zero ;)

Charged the gear with triple layers and dual hot pads and incognito masks and off we went.

We mostly spent the day looking for powder, found mostly on the trailsides and on the black diamonds, which were all in great shape. BW has an interesting topology: Nice and steep from the peak, flat in the middle and intermediate or beginner on the lower. Found one trail with the sign, "caution! ungroomed" With excitement we accelerated. We hit sloppy seconds powder about boot deep.

The woods were so tracked out that it wasn't much fun, so we looked for fun elsewhere.
We spent a good part of the day working on form and conditioning, really getting our rhythm back in the pow, feeling the burn and catching our breath often. Lots of close linked turns, lots of drills, always moving, keeping warm.

There was no surprise to me, zero winds, but my bud marveled over it all day. Even with -8, no wind and with sun made all the diff. We stayed out for 3 hours without a break first half, much to my surprise.

NASTAR course looked good, but by the time we remembered, it was 230 and they were tearing it down. We skied the course after and so few skiers showed up that it seemed freshly groomed at the end of the day.

The trails were edge-able, there was no scraping all day, right to the closing bell.
The lift un-boarding is designed to give you lots of time to stand up and move away. There is very little elevation change from the parking to the lodge, or from the lodge to the lift. For those that find skiing a hassle, you'll love the place.

Mt. Washington was in full glory today, not a clout to be seen, the hotel was brilliant, it was a photo-op made in heaven. The sky was clear in all directions for miles.

Food was good but pricey (doh, what else is new!), especially the minestrone soup and burger.

So all you intermediates and those with under-confident skiers, get here. The moniker "low stress skiing" still applies.
 

polski

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In my fairly limited experience there, even when they groomed like mad BW tended to leave pretty wide swaths ungroomed on the edges of wider trails. Was that the case yesterday?
 

billski

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In my fairly limited experience there, even when they groomed like mad BW tended to leave pretty wide swaths ungroomed on the edges of wider trails. Was that the case yesterday?
Kinda sorta, but not really much differentiating effect. It looked for the most part that the runs right under the lifts were groomed that way, but for the most part, the ungroomed was so heavily tracked, and the remainder so light and moveable and un-bumped that the effect was pretty much a homogenous trail. There were a few short bump sections here and there, but the exception not the rule. Bode's had some ungroomed on skier's right, but as soon as it flattened out, it skied like groomed on that side too.

Nevertheless, we found some nice sweet spots in non-obvious places. What always drives me crazy is that we spend time scoping out undiscovered sweet spots, and by the next run there are loads of people on it where before there were none. Ah, such is life skiing organized areas!


There were two ungroomed trails, which were wonderful, Waumbek, which skied amazingly well, and Short and Sweet to No Regrets (I think, which was kind of hard to get to because we discovered it late and they stopped the Fayban's triple a 330.

By the way, the black diamond trails still have several serious exposed waterbars.
 

4aprice

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One of my favorite runs at Bretton is West Glade. I've always found decent bumps in there. Even though its not the most challanging mountain I enjoy that place.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ
 
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